Industrial equipment can include interfaces that are accessed by many different users. For example, multiple work shifts may interact with a particular piece of industrial equipment via the equipment's interface. The interface typically includes software and settings that control and monitor the industrial equipment. For example, the software may include menus that, when accessed, can affect the operation of the industrial equipment. Inappropriate changes to the software and settings may adversely affect the reliable operation of the industrial equipment and can even result in catastrophic events.
Many industries try to ensure reliable operation of their equipment by limiting access to the interface with logins and passwords. For example, each user of the interface may be set up with a unique login and password. To access the menus on the interface, the user enters the login and password. However, since there are many users for each interface, logins and passwords for each user can unduly consume limited computing resources in the interface. In addition, the logins and passwords are susceptible to human foibles, such as forgotten or shared passwords. Therefore, using the logins and passwords to control access to the interface is not only burdensome, but may also result in unauthorized access by users.
Accordingly, there is a need for authorizing access to an interface without an undesirable consumption of computing resources on the interface. There is also a need for managing authorizations for a large number of users for the interface while preventing unauthorized access. These and other needs can be met by controlling access to the interface with a dongle.